1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for making a document in accordance with a form from data automatically retrieved from a database.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a typical example of printing data in accordance with a predetermined form, address writing of a post card is well known in a word processor. In this technique, information relating to the form of the post card is preregistered in the word processor, and a document is displayed or printed in accordance with that information. On the other hand, when data is to be outputted on an arbitrary blank form, analysis of the form based on an input image, retrieval of data to be written and outputting of the data in accordance with the form are required.
A system for analyzing a form based on an input image is disclosed in JP-A-l-119885. In this system, a document having a table format is inputted as an image, and ruled lines and words in the table are detected from the input image. A database system is known as a system for retrieving data. It is shown in "Base of Database System"-0 by T. Uemura and printed by Ohm Co., Ltd., pages 123-128. In this reference, a search command to a Relational database is written in SQL.
Outputting of data in accordance with a format is disclosed in JP-A-63-174162. In this system, a form of a sheet is read into a document processor such as a word processor and a user enters a document in accordance with the form while he/she watches the form displayed on a screen, and the inputted document is outputted in accordance with the form.
However, the following problems were encountered in the prior art systems.
First, in the system disclosed in JP-A-l-119885, only the ruled lines and the words in a table are recognized and no consideration is paid to the printing with the form based on the recognition results.
In the method described in "base of Database System", a user must use SQL to retrieve data.
In the system disclosed in JP-A-63-174162, a user must enter data while he/she watches a terminal screen even if a document to be made is a simple one such as a personal history.
For those problems, a method for storing data to be written on a sheet in a database, automatically retrieving the data and outputting the data may be used. However, in this method, the condition to search the database must be automatically generated.